DCO Highlights

Program highlights, project updates, and announcements

20 September, 2016

Pre-proposal submission deadline 25 October 2016
Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) science is broad and far-reaching in its scope. To date, most of DCO science has been carried out within four communities—Deep Energy, Deep Life, Reservoirs and Fluxes, and Extreme Physics and Chemistry—by nearly 900 researchers in 40 countries.
Throughout the remainder of its decadal program, DCO will focus on synthesis and integration, culminating in a wide range of activities and products by 2019. To encourage...

19 September, 2016

On 29-30 August 2016, the EarthByte group hosted a workshop at the University of Sydney School of Geosciences to bring together data scientists and geoscientists exploring the deep carbon cycle.
At the workshop, the EarthByte team demonstrated their open-source subduction zone and oceanic crust modeling tools, which are best used to visualize data in deep time and to help researchers test hypotheses about the planetary scale deep carbon cycle with a plate kinematic model.
The project aims...

14 September, 2016

The Deep Energy Community (DEC) of the Deep Carbon Observatory invites proposals for short- term funding of projects and/or activities aimed at addressing the DEC’s decadal goals and/or strengthening the international DEC community and its abilities to generate funding for new and ongoing initiatives.
The DEC is dedicated to quantifying the environmental conditions and processes from the molecular to the global scale that control the origins, forms, quantities and movements of reduced...

25 August, 2016

An international team of scientists is traveling to the islands of Papua New Guinea this September to study degassing from active volcanoes in remote jungles there. Some of these volcanoes are among the most active on Earth, ejecting a significant proportion of global volcanic gases into the atmosphere. The team, led by DCO DECADE (DEep CArbon DEgassing) scientist Brendan McCormick (University of Cambridge, UK) and supported by DCO and NERC COMET (the UK's National Environment Research...

19 August, 2016

The second DCO Summer School, held from 23-28 July 2016, brought together an international group of early career scientists for a weeklong, immersive scientific experience in and around Yellowstone National Park. Ten instructors guided the Summer School activities, which included classroom lectures, field trips, and hands-on data collection and analysis. The Summer School program examined Yellowstone’s complex volcanic and hydrothermal systems through the lenses of biology, geology, and...

27 July, 2016

by Hailiang Dong and Craig Schiffries
An international workshop on a Multi-Well Deep Underground Laboratory (MW-DUL) in Eastern China was convened in Changchun, China from 3-8 July 2016. The MW-DUL is designed to utilize existing wells, including scientific drilling borehole SK-2, Lincan-1, Chinese Continental Scientific Drilling (CCSD), Hong-25, and some oil wells in the Songliao Basin to observe geophysical, chemical, and biological processes at great depth. The principal goal of the workshop...

27 July, 2016

Japanese colleagues share latest findings at DCO Symposium in Yokohama and aboard D/V Chikyu
More than 100 scientists from around the world gathered to share their latest research findings regarding the role of deep carbon in planetary function at the Pacifico Yokohama Conference Center on 26 June 2016. The Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) Symposium in Yokohama brought together leaders of the four DCO Science Communities and their eminent Japanese colleagues for an exciting, interactive,...

26 July, 2016

23–28 July 2016Yellowstone National Park, USA
Photos and tweets from the Second DCO Summer School. Follow the updates on Twitter using the hashtag #DCOSS16. Click for more details about the program.
All photos by Katie Pratt.

22 July, 2016

The Third International Diamond School took place at the University of Alberta, with the Deep Carbon Observatory as the main event sponsor (together with De Beers and IsoMass). DCO's Graham Pearson (Reservoirs and Fluxes Scientific Steering Committee member; University of Alberta, Canada), Steve Shirey (Carnegie Institution for Science Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, USA), Thomas Stachel University of Alberta, Canada), Bob Luth (University of Alberta) and Fabrizio Nestola (University of...

22 June, 2016

In Earth’s deep interior, carbon is stored in a dynamic system of silicate rocks and aqueous fluids existing under extremely high pressures and temperatures. Studying this inaccessible system of melts and fluids requires both laboratory experiments and theoretical modeling. Unifying this research in models is a critical step toward understanding the dynamic movements of carbon in Earth.
Despite the importance of carbon transport by melts and fluids in deep Earth, there is currently no...

16 June, 2016

From October 2015 to February 2016 the Trail by Fire expedition surveyed the length of the Nazca plate subduction zone making gas measurements at 15 active volcanoes from Peru to southern Chile. With nearly 200 active volcanoes (4 currently erupting and 18 in a state of unrest), the South American Andes is one of the world’s most tectonically and volcanically active regions. The remote locations, high elevations (up to 6893 m) and lack of established trails to the summit of most of these...

11 June, 2016

The 26th Goldschmidt Conference will take place at the Pacifico Yokohama Conference Center, Yokohama, Japan, from 26 June - 1 July 2016. On Sunday, 26 June, DCO is hosting a symposium in 5F Room 502, Pacifico Yokohama Conference Center from 9:00AM - 5:30PM. Whether you are local to the Yokohama area or are in town for Goldschmidt 2016, we welcome you to join us at the symposium for a full day of DCO-related talks. Members of the DCO Executive Committee will provide introductions...

31 May, 2016

The Deep Carbon Observatory program is truly exceptional in its goals and scope. Carbon is stored and transported in all three states of matter: gas (e.g. by several different kinds of volcanic emissions), liquid (e.g. in hydrocarbon reservoirs), and solid (in graphite and diamond, as well as more than 400 other carbon-bearing mineral species). It is present in significant quantities in all the major reservoirs of our planet: the atmosphere, the oceans, the crust, the mantle, and the...

31 May, 2016

One of the key scientific objectives in studies of deep life and carbon is to understand environmental factors that constrain population, activity, diversity and ecological function of microbial communities, and the extent of habitable zones in Earth’s interior. To better constrain the temperature limit of life in the deep biosphere, the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) is preparing Expedition 370 “T-Limit of the Deep Biosphere off Muroto (T-Limit)” with the Japanese drilling vessel...

9 May, 2016

Wikipedia, the free crowd-sourced online encyclopedia, is one of the top ten websites in the world in terms of monthly traffic to the site [1]. Over five million Wikipedia articles cover a vast range of topics, dozens of which relate to topics of interest to DCO, from bioreactor to kimberlite to x-ray diffraction.
For DCO, Wikipedia offers an opportunity to present deep carbon science to a broader audience. DCO research will develop new knowledge, as well as refine and expand our understanding...

2 May, 2016

The Deep Energy Community (DEC) of the Deep Carbon Observatory invites proposals for short- term funding of projects and/or activities aimed at addressing the DEC’s decadal goals and/or strengthening the international DEC community and its abilities to generate funding for new and ongoing initiatives.
The DEC is dedicated to quantifying the environmental conditions and processes from the molecular to the global scale that control the origins, forms, quantities and movements of reduced...

27 April, 2016

The Deep Carbon Observatory, the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP), and several European Geoscience Union (EGU) divisions jointly organized a Union Symposium on Deep Geofluids at the 2016 European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna, Austria (17-22 April 2016). The symposium, which took place on Thursday, 21 April at 15:30, was co-chaired by Brian Horsfield, Executive Director, ICDP; Craig Schiffries, Director, DCO; and Christopher Juhlin, President, EGU...

19 April, 2016

DCO recently partnered with the American Geosciences Institute (AGI) to engage and actively recruit geoscientists from traditionally underrepresented groups in the United States. Earlier this year, AGI put out a call for eligible geoscientists to apply for grants to facilitate a variety of activities and become more engaged with DCO. These grants will fund travel to national and international conferences, DCO-related workshops, conferences and events, lab or fieldwork to advance DCO-aligned...

29 March, 2016

The Deep Carbon Observatory Executive Committee met on 1-2 March 2016 to discuss overarching themes for DCO’s final years—including modeling and visualization, synthesis and integration, field studies, and instrumentation—as well as plans beyond the end of the decadal program in 2019. The meeting, which was held at the headquarters of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., included a strategic discussion with Carnegie president Matthew Scott.
The Executive Committee recently...

The Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) is a global community of multi-disciplinary scientists unlocking the inner secrets of Earth through investigations into life, energy, and the fundamentally unique chemistry of carbon.